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Re: How's your spring????

Originally Posted by Allen Martens

Cleared the road to my staging yard at home today. Looks like that yard won't take long to melt if we ever get temperature greater than 2 C.

Allen. We still have a pretty good frost seal with no signs of any seepage into the ground when we get a little melt. We were dry in the fall but early snow melted enough to seep in and froze hard over winter. Ice on the area lakes is still 3 feet thick so I'd guess the ground is frozen pretty deep too. When does your frost seal usually go out? Here, we're usually pretty well thawed by the first of April.

Re: How's your spring????

Originally Posted by beebreeder

Hi All
Well from the UK the same answer, what spring, the bees are usually now on the dandelions and buildup is underway, instead we are still feeding fondant, patties etc, we get a couple of warmer days then rain and cold again, and this follows a terrible season last year, I think losses are going to be high over here.
Kev

Sounds like the weather pattern isn't just in North America. Hope the weather turns around and those dandelions start cranking out nectar! How's the moisture in the UK compared to last year?

Re: How's your spring????

The spring is just not starting, this time last year we were onto double brood boxes, this year I have not even opened some of them just topping up the fondant to keep them going as there is little pollen around as the flowers are not out either

Originally Posted by Chip Euliss

Sounds like the weather pattern isn't just in North America. Hope the weather turns around and those dandelions start cranking out nectar! How's the moisture in the UK compared to last year?

Re: How's your spring????

oh man, I feel for you guys out on the praries. Here on the island, spring came a little early. Saw the first dandies already in early March, wowsers. I put supers on the bees in the holly farm 3 weeks ago, and the maples started blooming a couple days later. One of my hives is capping the first super, and putting nectar into the second. I'm hoping they get a few frames of that maple stuff capped over the next week. It'll be a bit of a chore to wind up the extractor for just a few frames, but I'm really curious about how maple honey will taste....

Re: How's your spring????

Originally Posted by grozzie2

oh man, I feel for you guys out on the praries. Here on the island, spring came a little early. Saw the first dandies already in early March, wowsers. I put supers on the bees in the holly farm 3 weeks ago, and the maples started blooming a couple days later. One of my hives is capping the first super, and putting nectar into the second. I'm hoping they get a few frames of that maple stuff capped over the next week. It'll be a bit of a chore to wind up the extractor for just a few frames, but I'm really curious about how maple honey will taste....

Re: How's your spring????

We got canola blooming already.... sorry to rub it in... they just planted about 80 acres next to my hives about 4 weeks ago too.... The other field is about 1 mile away, hopefully the girls find it, because they ate 2/3 a deep of honey already and barely any open nectar in the hives but they're ready for a 3rd deep anyway....

Re: How's your spring????

It hasn't been so bad here. This has become one of the better springs I can remember. We had at one point close to 2 weeks of sun at the beginning of april with temps getting up to 22 degrees celcius (70 ferenheit). and for the most part it's been equal sun and rain. Couple this with a 5% loss and the hives are all strong and healthy, It the makings of a honey surplus yet to come. We have another 2 weeks of good sunny hot weather coming up and the maple, dandilions, and cherries are all out in full bloom, it has me all excited.

6 weeks ago I under supered my singles and a week ago i reversed them. quite a few of those new supers had 4-5 frames of brood already. My hives are in impressive shape. I will equalize again one more time before putting on the honey supers. After the spring flow I'll be making my nucs and get back up to 80 hives for the summer.

Re: How's your spring????

ya I pushed all my queen orders back to middle of May to the end of May
Just finished setting the last of the hives out, looks like 20-25% losses but the hives look awesome considering,

We pushed our way into one yard yesterday, the snow is still 3 to 4 feet deep in the yards. Ropes on our covers prevented us from checking most of the hives. They are all iced in. We were able to check 16 hives and only found one dead one. That was a pleasant surprise after the winter we are having.

Re: How's your spring????

Pretty wild weather but it's showing signs of breaking. Our frost is out of the ground and much of the snow is gone. We hit 70 F over the weekend and it was in the mid-50s today Our lakes are still frozen and it's the latest our lakes have been frozen in the historical record. Tomorrow is forecast to be in the 40s which is ok since my bees came in today and I didn't get them all spaced out tonight. They are calling for another warm up this weekend so I can get a queen bank set up for queens that start coming in next week. I'd guess our buffalo berry will be blooming within a week with the saskatoons a week or so after that. It will be interesting to see how the season plays out!